I’d ask for an elaboration, but I’m not sure that you’d care to… if said experience was personal and therefore unsharable.
Brahman/Atman, or… Rta, of which the former were spawned from, precedes the religions that made them theirs, and so is neither a Buddhist or Hindu concept… but a human one, of which the irreligious adhere to its principles, alongside their religious counterparts.
I’d say… religion is simply the vehicle, in which to drive the concept of a socio-political mantra through…
That’s a task that You have set yourself… I have set myself no such task… I am taskless.
Does seeing the Dharmachakra mean seeing the light?
Someone with a social phobia wants to know if having close relationships actually improves life. So far that person has avoided social contacts.
(this is a metaphor or a parallel for Buddhism)
It improves life for some, this can be demonstrated by their own evaluations and evaluations of levels of stress hormones, for example)
The person who is socially phobic can point to people who do not engage in close social relations and seem content.
The person who is socially phobic demands an argument that proves that everyone should have close relationships.
Well, there isn’t one.
The person who avoids contact, on the other hand, does not have an argument that proves everyone should avoid them.
IOW the socialphobe invests energy creating a life that is merely based epistemologically on unsupported choices. But to engage in other activities they demand rigorous epistemological processes.
How does one move from social phobia?
Well, there are lots of ways, all involving exploratory experience. Could be explorations of memory related to trauma and family relationships, could be via phobia challenges where the person explores tiny exposures often combined with checking to see if assumptions about social contact are true.
If the person has no desire or interest in this, well they don’t end up wiht a professional who is helping them unlearn the pattern.
If one has no interest in Buddhism, well duh, there’s no reason to try it. If you are satisfied with your life and
your
own
unproven to be effective or correct for all persons choices
Then you have not motivation to go through the challenges one faces learning…
ANYTHING
But if one has an interest, well try meditating…
There is a fundamental confusion in thinking that choosing to engage in Buddhism is an epistemic parallel to publishing a physics paper on the existence, say, of a particular fundamental particle. And that’s being charitable. I think it is more likely it is not a confusion but a charade.
Time is passing engaged in current activities that are not supported by an argument every rational person should be convinced by.
But if the point isn’t to get some relief … if the point is to confirm your current beliefs, then setting very high requirements and not engaging in any practices is effective. It also does not involve much effort or work.
Okay, connect that to my own interest in Brahman: how it becomes intertwined in the lives that Hindus/Buddhists live. Lives that involve distinguishing between behaviors thought to be enlightened and behaviors thought not to be; and how that becomes intertwined in the understanding of “I” on the other side of the grave.
In regard to your own life for example.
On the other hand, if that is not of significant concern to you in regard to Brahman, we’ll just have to move on to others.
Okay, in regard to the political prejudices you embody relating to, say, vaccines or Donald Trump, what does it mean then to be “taskless”?
Also, is there any way possible that Brahman can be discussed by the faithful in regard to morality here and now and immortality there and then? Or does it ever and always come down merely to how you think about it “spiritually” in your head? How comforting and consoling one’s assessment of it is sustained.
Yes, good point. I agree. Though I am not just or even mainly responding to Iamb’s general position ( and from memory only now ). It’s more like his assumptions and attitude inspire me to mull over the processes many of us in fact do use to choose/to learn, change, etc. and also to mull over our predicament/situation/options. There is something unreal in the proof without experience model of learning. But then, what is the model that I follow and some others follow? I ask myself. To end up in Buddhism or somewhere else, in part or in whole? How do people actually, at least many of them, develop, change, learn something? So, it’s a mulling, with Buddhism in the background, about at least one way to change if that was an interest. If that were an interest? If…
Why our path over someone else’s? because one is not supposed to stray too far from their inherent Dharma is why, otherwise one would become open to coercion, corruption, abuse, etc.
You tell me? as you’re the one questioning it, not I… perhaps it’s a reason why one should be practicing their Dharma, then perhaps there’d be less questions and more self-actualised answers.
Nicely put, and well-phrased…
Even kin see and experience the world and things differently, at a certain cut-off point somewhere in their minds.
I’d say… that you’ve described the process of maturing/learning/individually-evolving/progression, so getting over one’s ego/getting over the-self, of which some reach there much more sooner than others… some may never… some don’t need to because they were already there.
Then I’d say… we need to choose our reality wisely… the one that we want to fit into the objective state of the formative/the causative, that all thoughts and actions finally find themselves arriving at.
I will leave it to the actual Buddhists to answer this.
Did my answer not suffice? I’d give the same answer whether we’re talking about the either/or world or the is/ought world. The self is an illusion because it is not permanent. It is not permanent in the either/or world or the is/ought world. We’re not just talking about molecules or energy transitioning in and out of the body, we’re talking about my inner world–my feelings and thoughts, my values and beliefs, my memories, my character, my experiences–all of which are extremely hard to pin down in the either/or world.
Sure. So let’s take a common Buddhist practice that involves morality. Say the alleviation of suffering. Suffering is a very real part of life for the Buddhist (despite life being an illusion), and it is important to alleviate it for as many souls as we can. Therefore, as one who has been enlightened and has found a path out of suffering, it is incumbent on the Buddhist to bring others out of their suffering by showing them the path to enlightenment. The way out of suffering leads to the disillusionment of the ‘I’. With that, there is no more ‘I’ to suffer, and there is no more ‘I’ to reincarnate. One is therefore not only free from suffering but from the wheel of Samsara itself.
In much the same way as I explained above. The path to salvation according to Buddhist teaching is to become enlightened to the truth about reality–about its illusory nature–for this alleviates one of all earthly suffering. The moral obligation of the Buddhist is to show this path to others so that their suffering may be alleviated too. The practice is by meditating and following the eight-fold path: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path. This is connected to the fate of the ‘I’ in the afterlife by allowing one’s self to let go of the self, to let it dissolve, thereby leaving nothing behind to cling to, nothing to bring one back into this life reincarnated. One essentially “escapes” the wheel.
Is that the note you like to end on? A dismal look at your nihilistic point of view and how glaringly it contrasts with the religion of the spiritualist or the objectivist, with a slant for more grounded realism on your side, and in-the-clouds phantasmagoria on the other? Is this an expression of dissatisfaction with where your inquiry leads or the final jab you ultimately aim to deliver?
Right, now I want to know where you go with this? I’ve answered your question. What is your next move? Is this it? Just to point out that the suffering and injustices of the world go on in spite of the spiritualist’s/objectivist’s views? In spite of how he “connects the dots” between those views and how that plays out in specific moral context here and now? In spite how he re-connects that with the afterlife and the fate of the ‘I’ there and then? Is your goal to show how it’s all in vein no matter how tightly he thinks those connections are forged? Really, I want to know what you’re ultimately trying to accomplish with all this inquiry.
I believe I’ve shed enough light on that with my responses above.
Filling in for that Buddhist, I would ask for a more detailed account of how you construe the ‘I’ you want me to comment on. To hear that you have a fractured and fragmented sense of identity is no shock to a Buddhist given he thinks the ego we all believe in is a false one anyway, and under certain pressures and rude awakenings, the cracks always begin to show. But I’d need a clearer picture of your construel of ‘I’ (particularly what dasein means to you) to make this my formal comment on the matter.
Okay, let’s reconfigure this into a discussion of a particular context involving behaviors that come into conflict over value judgments derived from a particular religious narrative that includes Dharma in its own rendition of a scripture. And, in turn, how this relates to the fate of “I” beyond the grave.
Well, sure, if you don’t question your sense of identity much beyond what a particular religious narrative presumes, then the answers enable you to sustain both the comfort and the consolation that come with them. The arguments I give in regard to the historical, cultural and experiential parameters of “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein are just shrugged away.
To what extent have you delved into your religious, moral and political values given the manner in which I myself approach them here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=194382
This is always my own aim here when it comes to examining “I” in the is/ought world. God or No God. In other words, the extent to which someone is convinced that in regard to their religious, moral and political values, they are in sync with the “real me” in sync with “the right thing to do”.
Actually it is black and white. You’re trying to play “grey word games” when flying as the term is being used here is the infinite ability to always defy gravity.
I said it was clever. I didn’t say it was true, that beliefs determine reality.
First, of course, we don’t know how to talk about forks and chairs and neighbors definitively because we don’t know how to grapple with and understand them given the very nature of existence itself. And we don’t know if the exchanges we do have about them reflect beyond all doubt the capacity of human beings to exchange posts with some measure of free will in venues such as this.
Therefore, what “I” do then is all that I can do:
1] presume that my assessment of forks and chairs and neighbors bares at least some relevance to the nature of existence itself and…
2] presume that I do have some measure of free will in broaching, assessing and evaluating them in venues such as this
Given that what can we know about forks and chairs and neighbors…information and knowledge able to be communicated to others demonstrably? What empirical, material, phenomenological facts can we exchange confidently about them? And how would these facts be understood differently by different religious denominations? Are forks and chairs and neighbors construed by Western religions different from how they are construed by Eastern religions? As they become pertinent to our day to day interactions?
How are the use of forks and chairs and neighbors intertwined existentially when Buddhists connect the dots between enlightenment and karma here and now and reincarnation and Nirvana there and then?
And what changes when, say, forks and chairs are used as weapons to harm others? And how are enlightened men and women obligated to treat neighbors?
No, suffering itself is still too general.
We need a more specific context. Suppose John is a prison inmate about to be executed for murdering Mary. If the state kills him some of his family and friends and loved ones will suffer. But if he is not executed many who loved Mary will suffer because they believe that he deserves to die.
Same with abortion and animal rights and gun laws and vaccines and the role of government. Same with all conflicting goods. Some construe suffering if this is done while others if that is done instead.
Then with religion the stakes get jacked up all the more. Behaviors on this side of the grave become anchored to things like sin and enlightenment. Which then get anchored “in the head” of the faithful with one’s fate on the other side of the grave. Only with most Western religions that becomes intertwined with God and Judgment Day. And I still don’t really have a solid clue as to how it might work in a No God religion.
Then I’m back to bringing this “general description intellectual/spiritual contraption” out into the world pertaining to particular conflicting goods in a particular set of circumstances. And the part where Buddhists are able to demonstrate that their own spiritual path is preferable to the “hundreds and hundreds” of other denominations out there who might share the conviction that there is but one truly enlightened path.
But it is their own.
Instead.
The note that I end on – encompassed in the arguments I make in my signature threads – merely reflects my own existential contraption here. The manner in which I make a distinction between the Self in the either/or world and the “self” in the is/ought world. And, then, in threads such as this one, in connecting the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then.
From my perspective, philosophy is not about coming up with something that makes you feel better, but something that seems the most reasonable to you “here and now”. Religion just ups the ante by proposing that if you follow down a certain path [their own] you will feel all the better still. And then for all the rest of eternity.
That’s basically the assumption I make about any number of reactions to me from the moral and political and spiritual objectivists. They recognize what is at stake for them if, perhaps, the assumptions I make are more reasonable. And on both sides of the grave.
On the other hand, since there are so many more of them than there are of me, I would be a fool not to hear them out. At this point in my life, I have little more to lose and a whole heap to gain if they can convince me to go a little further still down their path.
I aim in having a minimal negative impact on others, and steer clear of those that don’t do likewise for me… so keeping my environment as non-toxic as is possible.
Enlightenment is self-awareness of negative behaviours that are harmful to others… that doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun and crack a few jokes, but not at the constant expense of others and their feelings.
It’s about having a clean karmic line, unfettered by wrong-doings and negatives… which kin inherit, and hopefully continue to uphold that Dharma.
How can we know how our behaviours will impact our fate after death, except through the interactions and actions of our kin?
Take Brahman?
Is there a choice in the matter, once a significant amount of enlightenment has been achieved in the manifestation of Brahman within one’s psyche? Once we know better, can we stop knowing better?
…in, me not having an agenda, but more a purpose… whatever it is, at any given point in time.
Brahman is to be, then to express that through doing/words and actions, so that the morality/immortality issue is appeased… so being a sacrificial alter unto ourselves, if you will.
But: in regard to the behaviors that you choose here and now as they pertain to what you imagine your fate to be there and then, I have no clear understanding of your point here. And that is always my aim in regard to God and religion and all other spiritual paths.
We are just not in sync in terms of intent and motivation here. Others can share your assessment above but then attach it to conflicting goods. Attaching this assessment further to the part after they die. That’s my “thing” here. Exploring that in regard to actual sets of circumstances.
Thus…
Well, that’s my point. Religious/spiritual folks have, down through the centuries, concocted scriptures and texts and traditions and mores and folkways that may or may not be reconfigured into enforceable laws. The idea being that there is a way to differentiate vice from virtue, sin from transgression, enlightened from benighted behavior. Linked to a God, the God by and large but not always.
Yes. You choose to behave in the way that you do. And if Brahman denotes/connotes “the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe” how do you connect the dots between that and this choice. Why not another choice instead? Here of course I link “I” to dasein. But that then precipitates [for me] the feeling of fragmentation.
Instead, you note…
Which I react to as but another “general description intellectual contraption”. Again, people can share this “spiritual” assessment but then come to embody profoundly conflicting moral and political agendas. What then in regard to the fate of “I” on the other side?
I have no clear idea what you mean here. With regard to moral and political prejudices how is an agenda differentiated from a purpose. And how are either one not basically derived subjectively from the manner in which I construe dasein embedded in a particular historical, culturally and interpersonal context?
